'Slalom': Film Review

The feverish atmosphere that grips an Olympic host city is so vividly suggested in French Canadian writer-director Pascal Plante's Nadia, Butterfly that you almost forget Tokyo 2020 has been postponed a year to next summer.

Also Read: 'The French Dispatch,' 'Soul' Make the Cannes 2020 Lineup As Festival Reveals the Movies It Would Have ShownAs befits a film that was going to premiere at a festival that was canceled, “Nadia, Butterfly” is set at an Olympic Games that didn’t happen.

Ariana Grande was among a large group of celebs who tweeted over the weekend reminding Americans to make sure they're registered to vote for the Nov. 3 election, which is less than 100 days away.

When the protests over the killing of George Floyd ripped through the U.S. in late May, they quickly found resonance abroad — perhaps nowhere more than in France, where the 2016 death of 24-year-old Adama Traoré while in police custody (in an incident with similarities to the Floyd case) gave the French their very own reason to take to the streets.

There's a fascinating juxtaposition in Shalini Kantayya's cautionary documentary Coded Bias. The engaging principal guide in this journey through our 21st century algorithmic hellscape is Joy Buolamwini, a young African American MIT Media Lab researcher who discovered that most facial recognition software is wildly inaccurate when it comes to darker-skinned faces and those of women.

At a moment when Americans and their institutions are acknowledging the consequences of long-held racist assumptions and policies, Khadifa Wong's Uprooted couldn't be more timely.

Jessica Kiang “I’ve never been to Lebanon,” Lebanese-American high-schooler Marjoun (Veracity Butcher) tells us in voiceover. “Just here: Arkansas.” There’s the slightest uninflected irony in her delivery of that last word, suggesting that her story will archly observe the conundrum of many a second-generation immigrant: belonging to a place that often fails to recognize you as one of its own.

How can an angelic-looking, 16-year-old blond boy resist a more tenebrous, slightly older man with a silver earring, a sailboat, a motorcycle and nipples peeking from beneath his billowy 1980s shirts? It's no surprise when cute Alex falls in love with the edgy and alluring — if also ill-omened —David inSummer of 85 (Ete 85), the 19th feature from gifted French filmmaker François Ozon.

Lisa Kennedy Throughout the U.S.’s decades-long war in Afghanistan, Americans have seen (perhaps even been part of) a scene played out thousands of times in airport terminals and on military tarmacs. While the permanent fixture aspect of the airport reunion should vex, the emotion of it never gets old.

If you're old enough to remember a time when Nazis were scary enough all by themselves, you may be a bit flummoxed by Ghosts of War. Combining war and horror movie tropes in an awkward manner more silly than scary, this belated sophomore feature from writer/director Eric Bress (2004's The Butterfly Effect) makes you long for the days when American G.I.s didn't have to fight supernatural beings as well as German soldiers.

Also Read: 'The Outpost' Film Review: War Is Hell in Immersive Combat MovieEinhorn and Davis are sympathetic to Eisch, but the object isn’t to get us to root for him the way many moviegoers rooted for Kyle; the filmmakers just want us to understand where he comes from, where his family is going and what that says about the state of American manhood, particularly in the heartland.What is says is sobering and at times disturbing, which gives the film a quiet power even if it’s at times

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticNot since the summer of 2003, when François Ozon unveiled Sapphic sizzler “Swimming Pool” at the Cannes Film Festival, has the French director seduced audiences quite as brazenly as he does in “Summer of 85,” which was also set to premiere at Cannes, before the global coronavirus outbreak forced the cancellation of the 2020 edition.

Identifying Features, from first-time director Fernanda Valadez, is like water in the desert for the mostly myopic genre of "la frontera" action films that depict the migration crisis at the southern border of the United States. Shot on location in rural Guanajuato, Mexico, this poignant film (which scooped two awards in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at this year's Sundance fest and will be distributed in the U.S.

The timing couldn't be more fortuitous for the release of Mary Mazzio's uplifting documentary about the nation's first African American high school rowing team, which feels almost like a tonic for these troubled times. Narrated by Common and including NBA greats Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade among its executive producers, A Most Beautiful Thing, scheduled to open in theaters, powerfully demonstrates the healing potential of sports and the ways it can help bridge societal divides.

Where did the universe, humanity, our planet and chocolate ice cream come from? They were all created by a giant, all-powerful being made of spaghetti, with two googly-eyes on raised stalks and a pair of meatballs where cheeks would bulge. This is the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), and if there were any justice in the world, His story would stand as good a chance of being taught as fact in American schools as the anti-evolution narrative called Intelligent Design.

Maggie Lee Chief Asia Film CriticEye-popping action steals the show in “Lupin III: The First,” the first computer-animated feature entry in the classic franchise about the French gentleman thief and master of disguise.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn “17 Blocks,” Cheryl Sanford, matriarch of a low-income African American household in southeast Washington, D.C., talks wistfully of a “parallel universe” where she and her family enjoy cookouts, vacations and gift-filled Christmas mornings. This melancholy confession comes moments after a closeup of her casually snorting cocaine.

Also Read: Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda and 'Hamilton' Cast Surprise Young Superfan With Virtual Performance (Video)That approach also mimics Miranda’s achievement here, reimagining American history and the grand project of the founding fathers through the lens of an individual story, and in particular that of an undersung founding father who achieved greatness from humble beginnings as “an arrogant immigrant, orphan bastard, whore’s son.”Miranda crafted a sung-through hip-hopera that hews closely